Spanish Rolls (Španielske Vtáčky)

Alena from Žiar nad Hronom sent me recipe and pictures of her mom preparing španielske vtáčky, a delicious dish consisting of meat steaks filled with egg, hot dog and pickle. I have to admit that for the longest time I thought the name of this dish was španielske vtáčiky (notice that extra i), which would mean “little spanish birds”. But it’s not. I have no clue what vtáčky means! I even tried Google Translate and the online Slovak dictionary at slovnik.sk but no luck. My best guess is that it is derived from zatáčat (vtáčat?) which means to roll up. Which makes sense, since these are rolls, spanish rolls.

Žiar nad Hronom is a town of about 20,000 inhabitants. It is located less than an hour from my home town of Banská Bystrica, on the way to the capital, Bratislava. Very near the city is thermal spa Sklené Teplice (Glass Thermals). I spent a really fun Valentine’s Day weekend there (yes, Valentine’s Day is now celebrated even in Slovakia). The most unique feature of this spa, and something definitely worth your visit, is the cave bath. You basically swim inside a cave with water temperature reaching almost 108F!

Here is Alena’s recipe for spanish rolls. They look great!

Start by tenderizing the meat (mäso) with a meat tenderizer (the hammer, not the chemicals!). Also hard boil the eggs (vajíčka). Salt (osoľ) and pepper (okoreň) the meat and then load it with hot dog (párok), pickle (kyslá uhorka) and egg (vajce) – a quarter of each, that is. Roll into a tube and tie closed with a string (niť).

Then heat up oil (olej) in a pot and fry diced onion (cibuľa) until it turns golden. Add paprika.

Also add little bit water. Then add the rolls, steam covered until the meat is done. Add more water as needed.

Take the rolls out once the meat is cooked and remove the strings. Add little bit of flour into the pot to thicken the sauce. Place the meat back in the sauce and boil for few minutes.

By the way, I am always looking for more recipes. Feel free to send me your own step-by-step recipes and I’ll gladly publish them here. I am especially looking for instructions for baking various koláče.

19 Responses to “Spanish Rolls (Španielske Vtáčky)”

I received a comment on the Facebook page that in Spain, these types of dishes are indeed called “birds”. And in the Czech Republic, the name of the dish is španílske ptáčky, which also means Spanish birds.

I frequently make “španielske vtáčiky” very much the same recipe as you describe with difference that instead of hot dog I use a piece of good smoked bacon. I looked in my Slovak cookbooks, and there are variation of this with hot dog and cheese, etc.

About the origin of “vtáčky” I think you are right, the first thing that came to my mind was a derivation of “vtáčat” or “zatáčat” meaning roll-up. As a matter of fact, in a Slovak cookbook I frequently use it’s called “závitky” meaning rolls.

my mom use sausage(klobasa) instead of hot dog and makes a little bit different sauce which contains carrot and also cream, actually it’s the same sauce she makes to “svieckova na smotane” and it’s served with “knedla”

Great stuff – I love them. We use smokey bacon or just regular sliced bacon rather than a hotdog. Instead of string, toothpicks. We bake them in the oven with a bit of water in the roaster (packed together like you would cabbage rolls) Then take the pan drippings, add sour cream and flour (to thicken). So very yummy!!!!!!

My mother (not Slovak) did not learn much cooking from her mother as she died when she was young. But she learned a LOT from my father’s mother after she married. She called this dish “birdies” (little birds?). She had to have gotten this from my grandmother’s poor english translation of her understanding of the slovak word. I love em!

My father always called it Spanish birds when he named it in english, so Španielske Vtáčky, the Vtáčky meanns bird in slovak. Thank you, for the info, but I’m fairly sure he never used hot dog, more like a Viennese sausage. Was one of my favorite dishes when I was a child. Thank you.

my family always just called it vtacky (Dot ch kee) and I was told it meant little birds. reading all of these variations and finding this site makes me want to make a dinner using only slovak recipes one night.

My mother used to make this. She was from Slovakia, and she called it “spanielski vtachky” which she said was Spanish birds. She never put a hot dog or bacon on the inside. She would tenderized the steak, spread mustard on it, and then add the egg, and pickle and roll it up and used tooth picks too. We always had mashed potatoes with it. And it IS yummy!

Happy Holidays

Wishing you all happy holidays and all the best in 2018. Hopefully 2017 was a good year for you all.

Welcome

Welcome to SlovakCooking.com, website dedicated to traditional Slovak recipes and home-made cooking of our grandparents. Don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.